A Bug Hunter's Diary

3.4 Lessons Learned

As a programmer:

• Always define proper error conditions.

• Always validate return values correctly.

• Not all kernel NULL pointer dereferences are simple denial-of-service conditions. Some of them are really bad vulnerabilities that can lead to arbitrary code execution.

As a system administrator:

• Don’t blindly trust zones, compartments, fine-grained access controls, or virtualization. If there is a bug in the kernel, there’s a good chance that every security feature can be bypassed or evaded. And that’s true not only for Solaris Zones.